Ironically, the United States WILL HAVE great healthcare, at a tiny fraction of the cost.
And it's going to be so easy!
And the government will pay for it.
Details below...
Dear Ger,
I have only read the Table of Contents of your new book, "From Medical Care to Mangled Care," but can see that it is very well written.
You know your stuff inside-out, and not just academically.
You have an abundance of real-world knowledge, including your illustrious career at Bonadio & Co., and your up-close, on-site study of single-payer health systems in Canada, England, France, and Russia.
Even without reading your manuscript, I'm sure the final edition will be GREAT.
Furthermore, I doubt there would be any substantive benefit were I to comment on the specifics of what you've written.
However, one of my personal strengths is contextualizing "things" from overlooked points of view.
Here's an example:
Yes, there has been one 9/11 calamity every single day,
week after week, month after month for 14.3 years.
No typo.
(I had a professional statistician check my math.)
As I like to say, "The fullness of truth is only found in rich contextualization," and so my ability to provide context could be important for you.
Since -- at your request -- I have not read the manuscript of "Mangled Care"," I might be wrong.
But I feel reasonably confident you have not ventured very far into the domain of "policy recommendations," particularly as future policy might benefit from a few concrete proposals to secure the monetary wherewithal to afford good universal healthcare and dental care.
*****
Late in life, Dad "took me aside" to say that I was "his boy."
Clearly his love for all five of us was extraordinary, and he did not stint in the love he showered on us all.
But I think my venturesomeness -- both geographically and politically -- appealed to him, just as Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1948 attracted Dad mightily, leading him to vote "Socialist." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Thomas
Notably, Norman Thomas was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "unofficial policymaker" for much of Roosevelt's "New Deal," including the establishment of Social Security.
Mind you, Dad did not vote "Social Democrat."
He voted straight-up Socialist, 78 years before Bernie and AOC came on the scene.
Please read this Google AI overview in response to my inquiry, "To what extent was Norman Thomas foundational to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal?" https://share.google/aimode/9l0345Wy9kJUicL0l
If my surmise is correct, I think Dad recognized the kind of "visionary" in me that resided in himself - the kind of visionary that also resided deep inside Presbyterian minister, Norman Thomas, a card-carrying member of America's "Socialist Party."
My proposal:
By word count, I wrote 1.2% of your autobiography, "Underestimated, Mentally Ill, Yet Successful!", i.e., my reflection on Dad and Mom's bedrock teaching that we siblings always contemplate the foundational difference between "need" and "want," and that we focus, primarily, on what is necessary, and not so much on what we want.
In your new book, "From Mangaged Care To Mangled Care," I am not asking that you dedicate 1.2% of textual space to my proposed contribution to your new book.
I am only asking that -- as a postscript -- you include a link to this blog post, either with or without this introductory letter to you.
You can even change the title of my blogpost to suit your own purpose, and I am wide open to considering your suggestions concerning possible changes in my text as well.
I turn 80 next August: clearly, I am nearing the end of my life.
Just last month, I experienced an epiphany that America is vanishingly unlikely to emerge from its current political quandary in one piece, even if Democrats win resoundingly in this year's mid-terms ... even if we "donkeys" go on to win the Presidency in 2028.
As a nation, we are still operating on a number of mistaken principles.
If they are not expunged, we will remain on our current trajectory, hellbent for self-destruction.
*****
What do you say?
Include a postscript of 28 words?
I think linking to my proposal will fill what is, perhaps, a crucial gap in your exceptionally well-done book on "Mangled Care."
And although it's just a guess, I think Dad would consider it a good idea too.
28 words...
Thanks for reading my writing below.
And thanks for thinking it over.
This is NOT socialism.
It is Common Wealth.
(In the future, whenever anyone on the right side of the aisle throws the word "socialist" our way, ALWAYS begin your reply: "Oh, you mean the Commonwealth!")
After multiple attempts, I have decided to re-write the following essay as a pronunciamiento.
If we do not redistribute wealth by way of deliberate policy-making, a social breakdown will force civil-war-chaos-revolution on these "United" States.
In the grand scheme of things, these ugly outcomes - already baked in the (current) cake - may be what we need to purge ourselves of the evil that befouls our land.
If not radically changed, the current System is incapable of leading anywhere but deeper into Authoritarian Absolutism (also known as "corporatocracy"), an outcome indistinguishable from Hitler's fascist authoritarianism during his rise to power in the 1930s... whilst "the good Germans" rationalized his increasingly belligerent, increasingly fascist, Third Reich, comforting themselves that der Führer was just a passing phase, a momentary glitch.
With an eye to the future, I do not want my children to suffer such turmoil, chaos and pain under the umbrella of increasingly normalized corporacratic Cruelty.
Corporacratic Cruelty is a real thing, and it's not going away unless we remake our political economy.
The Normalization Of Cruelty During Donald Trump's Administration: A Compendium (Updated July 6, 2025)
Here is what we can really do, because it has already been done.
Norway has succeeded in redistributing wealth by determining that massive amounts of wealth are "common-wealth," part of a national patrimony. For nearly 50 years, Norway has made every Norwegian man, woman and child wealthy -- all 6 million of them -- by dedicating the nation's North Sea oil profits to a Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Watch it.
Be flabbergasted.
Video about Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund https://www.facebook.com/reel/1537857818009298
Excerpt from Google AI's overview of Norway's "Sovereign Wealth Fund":
Here is the link to Google AI's entire overview of Norway's "Sovereign Wealth Fund": https://share.google/aimode/VrydKkZWi3i3d3Ucs
We Americans have been conditioned by unregulated, winner-take-all, "Cowboy" Capitalism, to accept - and even champion - psycho-social degradation and widespread economic pauperization by Ultra-Wealthy oligarchs, plutocrats and kakistocrats.
They are destructive, damaging people who are fundamentally responsible for our degenerate social, political, and economic status quo.
These fundamentally exploitative people are "true believers" in an essentially heartless system: “Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.”
Remember: This guy got more popular votes than any presidential candidate in American history. And these folks are already strategizing their return to power...
... unless we make Jane and Joe Blow an offer they can't refuse - an offer that substantially, and forevermore, makes their wallets swell.
We have ALL been bamboozled by Dominance-Submission Hierarchies to accept the people's cruel political-and-mental colonization at the hands of people who "love money," people whose economic alliance with Donald Trump, effectively approves his Cruelty, both murderous and mundane.
"The Love Of Money Is The Root Of All Evil" - An Open Invitation To Christian Conservatives(Even if you despise Christianity, St. Paul cuts to the quick of our crisis by observing that "the love of money is the root of all evil.")
Here is where unbridled greed -- "the love of money" -- has gotten us:
The Normalization Of Cruelty During Donald Trump's Administration: A Compendium
All of us -- yes, even we liberals, progressives, radicals and revolutionaries -- remain relatively quiet about the bottomline Horror - The Grotesquerie - as long as our "numbers" come up... as long as WE have health insurance; as long as WE have IRAs and 401(k)s; as long as we have Social Security payouts that enable us to
"get by" if unforeseen circumstances oblige us to tighten our belts.
However, at bedrock, we overlook tens of millions of Americans whose numbers do not "come up" - Americans without proper healthcare, nor dental care of any kind, nor money to get them through even tiny setbacks, not to mention major crises.
- Jimmy Carter: "The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens."
- Tolstoy: "I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possilbe means - except by getting off his back." (Or, in the United States of America, by getting our knee off his neck.)
I have siblings -- every one of them extraordinarily good, generous people -- who have been conditioned to believe (and understandably so) that "the poor will always be with us." And so, they mostly decline, pretty much unconsciously, "to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them." https://poets.org/poem/hamlet-act-iii-scene-i-be-or-not-be
It is precisely this resignation, this oligarchically-orchestrated surrender to Uncle Sam's heartless economic system, that makes the cruel people we have become.
Most of Europe - Norway in particular - have not surrendered to their Military-Industrial-Establishment, and so they live in sane societies, fundamentally unlike the insanity that has been normalized here in the "United" States where 46% of the people have trouble making ends meet. https://share.google/aimode/RZx709jbLIvJZn0qL
Wealthiest country in the world?
Only 17% of West Europeans have trouble making ends meet. https://share.google/aimode/gM5jWQ11i8rxBtyXB
Almost all of us - myself included - have been systematically conditioned by piggish people -- squeaky clean, well-dressed people who are fundamentally indistinguishable from Donald Trump -- to accept the overarching oppression and the increasingly damaging piggishness of plutocrats by submitting ourselves to the craven asumption that "it's just the way it is."
Ritual Purity and Yeshua's "Whited Sepulchers"
And so, we do not even champion the poor and the marginalized, nor those people who have tumbled off the edge of our increasingly flat world - people who find themselves in never-ending freefall.
So far, we have refused to draw a red line in the sand, clearly identifying-and-controling the piggishness that WILL "do us in," if we fail to "take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them."
Like Charlie Kirk says, "Prove me wrong."
We are running out of time to do something bold and decisive to accomplish the doable goal of "saving the world..." before people -- degraded by the poverty, despair, and resignation wrought by grotesque wealth inequality -- "give up" and go along with the plutocratic (and increasingly kakistocratic) takeover of The American Experiment.
This takeover has been enabled by the precipitous decline of Virtue as defined (and deemed indispensable) by The Founding Fathers.
Consider AI Google's review of Virtue's indispensable role: Jeffrey Rosen, head of the United States Constitution Center, has written an enlightening book about the central role of "virtue" in the political thought of America's first revolutionaries:
"Hostile Takeover Capitalism," as practiced in the United States of America, is hell-bent on political, social, economic, and environmental dystopia.
Barring divine intervention, it is nearly impossible for me to believe that people who don't step up to support a "Common Wealth" are doing anything but signing off on the replacement of our self-governing Republic with a plutocracy-kleptocracy led by cruel, avaricious people who will degrade the country and its citizens... without end.
The old remedies, based on business-as-usual, no longer work.
This is "the two-minute warning," folks.
Get on board, or implicitly surrender your souls to the foul regime of Trump-Musk-Bezos-Thiel.
Note well.
Elon Musk has become the world's first trillionaire.
And like other ultra-rich Americans, he holds an automatic free pass that places him Above the Rule of Law, accompanied by his partners-in-crime, Trump, Zuckerberg, Bezos et al.
Again:
"Of the 195 economies tracked by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 174 countries have a nominal GDP of less than $1 trillion." (Here is AI's entire reply to the question, "How many countries have less than $1 trillion dollars in Gross Domestic Product?" Google AI Overview - https://share.google/aimode/uEqyNToVHIdGreBQX
If this deliberate - and accelerating - income inequality is how Uncle Sam's "Democratic Capitalism" works, then American capitalism is predatory, piggish, and ultimately cruel, not to mention self-destructive. (China is waiting in the wings.)
"War Is A Racket. I Was A Gangster For Wall Street - A Racketeer For Capitalism" These Are Verbatim Quotes By Major General Smedley Butler, Marine Corps Commandant, The Most Decorated Soldier Of His Time
Updated Compendium Of Pax-Barbaria Posts Concerning The Ravages Of Capitalism - Personal, Interpersonal, Political, Social, Economic and Environmental, 4/17/2026
We Americans, conditioned by our increasingly corrupt system of "Democratic Capitalism," rarely, if ever, talk about the citizenry's psychological and spiritual degradation. Just keep in mind that a record number of 75,000,000 Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2024 -- to elect him a second time, after test-driving him once!
Here's the "kicker."
It is virtually unmentionable that the engine propelling our degradation is American capitalism.
Cowboy Capitalism Dependably Degrades -- And Often Ruins -- The Lives Of The People It Marginalizes, While Persistently -- Eagerly -- Trashing The Biosphere: An Updated Compendium
*****
How do we create some significant measure of meaningful control over piggish people?
Consider:
Starlink should be nationalized. As I see it, the company can remain under Musk's direction, but at least 5% of its annual profits will be put in a Common Wealth Fund for the benefit of the American people.
If we act on our evident need to nationalize Starlink before Musk becomes, perhaps, the most potent power player in the globe's geopolitics -- we can then use that template to nationalize other companies comprising the Military-Industrial Complex. I encourage you to review Dwight Eisenhower's "Farewell Address to the Nation," broadcast from the Oval Office on the eve of John Kennedy's inauguration:
Eisenhower Reveals THE DEEP STATE: Ike's Farewell Address Televised From The Oval Office Sounds The Alarm That The "Military-Industrial Complex" Comprises The Greatest Threat To American Democracy By Making Us A Murderous Corporatocracy
(Yes, the history of nationalized companies is hideous. However, widespread higher education has created a pool of gifted, technocratic wonks, who are fundamentally committed to public service. There are now plenty of people who are smart enough - and virtuous enough - to create an entirely new track record for nationalized companies.)
Please view this video clip once again:
Video about Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund https://www.facebook.com/reel/1537857818009298
(Norway's approach to quasi-nationalization works famously well.)
Compendium Of Best Pax-Barbaria Posts About Abraham Lincoln (... And The J-6 Insurrection That Lincoln Prophesied)
These members of the Trump family - and hundreds of capitalist billionaires like them - are bad actors, committed 24/7 to the hostile takeover of the United States and the destruction of the Rule of Law. Like all sociopaths and psychopaths, these political and economic gangsters are intrinsically unable to feel guilt or shame.
Note well.
Time is running out.
If the "left side of the aisle" continues affirming our current liberal (and neo-liberal) model, then winning the White House in 2028 will be as disastrous as Joe Biden's remarkably decent and productive presidency,
It is astonishingly easy to overlook the obvious:
Biden gave way - directly - to Trump, and for a second time!?! -- because the simple people who make up Trump's Base realized one fundamentally true thing: these common folk (mostlyderiving from farm families, blue-collar workers and manual laborers) have been systematically excluded from the left-wing's vision of prosperity, a vision disproportionately focused on academic accomplishment, a vision that did not accommodate formally uneducated blue-collar workers... or the underclass... or "suicidally disenfranchised opioid users" whose lives were cut short by an epidemic of "deaths by despair." These are the very people desperate enough to want Donald Trump to "shake things up," thus tossing the nation from the frying pan into the fire. https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/deaths-of-despair-study.php
All these desperate people were systematically left behind.
Now, to prevent their desperation from "killing us all" (with democracy being the first casualty), we need to build a new America based on the assertive assumption that a modicum of real prosperity will be everyone's portion, and that by looking upon all wealth as Common Wealth, everyone will enjoy the third of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: "Freedom from Want." https://share.google/aimode/weo6nBJ8jnSpsRLvi (A "commonwealth" is a traditional English term dating to the 15th century meaning the "common well-being" or "public welfare.")
I propose that the name of the evolving Democratic Party be changed to "The Common Wealth Party," and that its motto be excerpted from the Preamble to the United States Constitution: "Dedicated to Promoting the General Welfare." (Retiring Illinois Senator Dick Durbin observed - brilliantly - that the current motto of the Republican Party is, "We are all in this...... alone.")
For decades -- at least since "The Greatest Generation" returned from its antifascist/antifa victory over Hitler -- "the uneducated" for whom Donald Trump professes his love have been dumbed down by craven acquisitiveness, at the behest of a supposedly "democratic capitalist" System that impels us to "buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't like."
Cowboy Capitalism (which is to say oppressive, exclusionary, winner-take-all Capitalism) has transformed formerly "responsible citizens" into Pavlovian "consumer units."
"The Greatest Generation: Labor, Capital And Betrayal Of The Social Contract"
George Carlin: Everything You Need To Know About American Society And Politics: "Just Promise The Doofuses New Gizmos"
Couple America's passion for mostly meaningless possessions with the nation's persistent anti-intellectual contempt-for-learning -- and we end up with Know-Nothing Christian Nationalists taking their cues from bottom-dwelling televangelists like Joel Osteen, Franklin Graham and Tammy and Jim Bakker, every one of them completely surrendered to their unshakable belief in "sola fide" ("salvation by faith alone"), and the corollary belief that Jesus is "coming back to save them."
And Lo!!!
They don't need to lift a finger to make the world a better place.
Jesus is going to take away all the boo-boos, make everything nice-and-bourgeois and indistinguishable from their bogus vision of the Nazarene, which is to say, their vision of heaven will be filled with people just like them.
Jim Bakker Resurrected: If This Doesn't Scare The Bejesus Out Of You, Repent For Your End Is Near!
Google AI's elaboration of Fuller's insight:
Fuller frequently critiqued what he viewed as dysfunctional, obsolete governance structures (such as politics, politicians, and rigid national borders), arguing that humanity should treat Earth like a unified system ("Spaceship Earth"). He believed that direct opposition to broken systems only exhausts our energy and reinforces their defenses, whereas designing a superior alternative naturally renders the old system irrelevant. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Other Notable Quotations with the Same Core Vision
If you are looking for similar quotes by notable thinkers that advocate for building entirely new visions rather than trying to fix or fight broken governance, these quotes align perfectly:
Albert Einstein:
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
Thomas Kuhn (on systemic paradigm shifts):
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Fuller is NOT encouraging indolence.
He is talking about what my Dad prized as the role of "Professional Student."
GO BACK TO SCHOOL!
... until you discover something... even if it's "only" your productive/creative role in a society that prioritizes The Common Good and The General Welfare.
A Sovereign Wealth Fund, or what I would call a Common Wealth Fund, (right alongside "The Common Wealth Party" as the upcoming "incarnation of the Democratic Party) is not the only way to finance a modicum of universal prosperity.
What I envision is a top-to-bottom, stem-to-stern re-working of the inheritance tax so that every billionaire WILL die a billionaire, and every multi-billionaire's wife, and every multi-billionaire's child, will also inherit a billion dollars.
So, there is no kind of financial deprivation, nor mathematical "leveling" of income all across society.
I am talking about a return to sanity.
*****
Here are two correlative approaches by Bernie Sanders and United Airlines CEO, Scott Kirby.
Bernie's Annual Billionaire Tax in detail:
(This talk is informative throughout, but for brevity's sake, I encourage you to watch the first 16 minutes.)
Google AI Overview of Bernie's Annual Billionaire Tax proposal: https://share.google/aimode/LD5QbjyjY5Ne9Vvq4
*****
United Airlines CEO on a near 100% inheritance tax: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/politics-policy/ccb-scott-kirby-united-airlines-wealth-tax-20261020/
United Airlines CEO says he’d pay near-100% inheritance taxes
Crucially, we must understand that any kind of wealth tax will take into account the FACT that, for the Ultra-Rich, income is TRIVIAL.
The lion's share of wealth held by the Ungodly Rich is held in investments that come under the rubric of "unrealized capital gains," a rather problematic phenomenon.
At least until now.
Fortunately, Trevor Noah has provided a precise and humorous definition of "unrealized capital gains. https://share.google/aimode/3h70yAxreVtu7t5NL
*****
By way of conclusion...
Ken Burns' documentary, "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History" is indispensable viewing for understanding our historical moment and our historical quandary.
Fortunately, "The Roosevelts" is every bit as dramatic as Oscar-winning dramas.
Too Much And Never Enough
I support gradual renaming of the Democratic Party as “The CommonWealth Party.”
By gradual renaming, I mean that Democratic politicians will all start using the phrase Common Wealth (CommonWealth) as a way to accustom American citizens to thinking of wealth generation as a community effort, and not a heroic effort by a few ultra-rich individuals who pretend they deserve ALL the profits that arise from The System they themselves have rigged, without sharing that wealth in ways that ensure a modicum of prosperity for ALL citizens.
Basically, it is the Democratic Party's task to start calling capitalist pigs, “pigs,” but without using that word.
Once our use of the phrase, CommonWealth (Common Wealth) becomes commonplace, it will be obvious to Americans that some measure of equitable distribution of wealth is a good thing, whereas winner-take-all capitalism is a criminal enterprise that infects all society with the sicknesses of poverty, criminality and psychosocial-economic pauperization.
The following examination of Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset's philosophy, and its incisive explanation of the quandary in which we find ourselves, is essential to freeing ourselves from the psychological prison in which the Oligarchy-Plutocracy-Kakistocracy has enclosed us
The unmitigated mess MAGA world has made of contemporary American society was not just predicted, but prophesied -- with minutely granular accuracy -- by Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, in his 1929 book, "La Rebelión de las Masas" (translated as "The Revolt of the Masses" in 1930)
I have NEVER encountered such an insightful, bedrock description of America's "Great Unraveling" - and the concomitant collapse of American society - as the analysis given in the groundbreaking book, "The Revolt of The Masses," by visionary Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, which left an indelible impression on me as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto in the 1960s, and on Bob Dylan in the early 70s.
The Incipient Unraveling Of The Western World As Seen By Visionary Spanish Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1929)
Is Ortega Y Gasset The Most Important Modern Philosopher? The Most Discerning Prophet?
FINIS
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